


The Fault In Our Tsars

by Ladytalon



Category: Deus Ex (Video Games), Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Flirting, Friendship, Gen, Humor, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Playing wingman, Rating May Change, Romance, Teasing, ficlet roundup
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-12
Updated: 2017-12-12
Packaged: 2019-02-14 00:09:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12995526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladytalon/pseuds/Ladytalon
Summary: When Irish Eyes Are Smiling...they’re probably up to something.





	1. Right On Target

**Author's Note:**

> I neither have the time nor inclination to write a huge fic about my two favorite Deus Ex NPCs, so I figured I’d post what I have and add to it when inspiration strikes. Any steaminess happens, I’ll update the rating and try to add a warning to the chapter in question. If you have any situations you’d like to see Faridah & Garvin thrown into, feel free to comment and I’ll definitely take it under consideration :)

He first meets Faridah Malik in a seedy bar just outside the Kuaigan district of Hengsha…and seedy is an unfortunately apt name for it, because he doesn’t even want to know when the last time the servers actually cleaned the tables. The man sometimes known as Garvin Quinn leans against the suspiciously stained plastic seat, and watches her watch him. She’s not very good at being subtle, but she’s giving it her best effort and he does her the favor of pretending not to realize that he’s being tracked. 

Quinn turns slightly so that he can watch her from the corner of his eye while his neural implants compile her biographical information and do a risk assessment, finished in less than thirty seconds. It’s highly probable that she’s here on Adam Jensen’s behalf, for whatever reason, and he shifts lazily so that his retinal scanner can check for weaponized augments. The only foreign materials in her body, however, are a few discreet neural augments that improve both hand-eye coordination and a separate reflex booster…that, and a few _very_ interesting piercings. He slides his drink away and looks directly at her.

Malik visibly nerves herself before approaching, and he waits patiently for her to sit down. “Is…this seat taken?”

“It is now,” Quinn says in his best Irish accent. “What's it to be, lass?”

“Garvin Quinn?”

“Can’t say I partake of that regularly, but the scotch isn’t bad,” he counters.

She gives him a _look_ , and he can feel the italics. “Jensen said you were a smartass.”

“You’ve got me there. Who are you and what do you want?”

Malik’s eyes settle on his. “I want a job.”

Of all the possible responses she could give, he definitely wasn’t expecting this one. “A _what_.” Quinn triggers his sub-vocal communication aug in a silent summons to Janus. A slight pressure in his skull, and he can feel his leader’s presence as they look out through his eyes while accessing Quinn’s wet drive. 

“A job,” she repeats.

 **Well?** Quinn asks irritably. **Are we running a Friends of Jensen halfway house?** “Doing…what, now? What exactly is it that you do, lass?”

_“A pilot could be very useful to us.”_

**We already have a pilot,** Quinn tells Janus as Malik shares her flying pedigree aloud.

 _“And now we will have two. Take her for registration reassignment after you are finished,”_ Janus tells him. _“I will leave her training in your hands_.”

 **Wonderful.**

Their communication has taken less than a minute and Quinn knows for a fact that Malik can’t have known that she hadn’t been receiving his full attention, but the pilot cocks her head to the side as she looks at him. “So, was that Janus?”

“What?”

“I’ve been around long enough to know when a ‘sub convo’ is happening, though you’re pretty good at hiding it.”

Quinn just barely stops his eyes from narrowing, wondering what his tell could possibly be. “That’s quite a claim,” he says as he decides to trigger his behavioral mod, a custom-built CASIE.

“And _that’s_ quite _rude_ , Mister Quinn. That circle on your face makes a perfect bullseye for my fist, so you’d better knock it the hell off.”

In the sudden silence inside his skull, he distinctly hears Janus chuckle before signing off for real this time.


	2. Looking Out For no1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quinn has a problem with his augs and needs a tune-up, but his post op recovery period is hampered by a Tarvos raid. Alex has never felt more alive.

When most people think of spying, they think of swapping packages in a train station, or sneaking inside a heavily guarded office complex wearing a black mask. The reality, however, is not nearly as exciting. Waiting has never been considered glamorous. “Is he ever going to get off his ass and leave?” Alex sighs. 

Quinn glances over. “Have patience, _sestrichka_. Even a statue must piss sometime.”

“What does that even mean?”

“It means that I had a diuretic compound placed into his food. Look at him, he’s dancing in his seat.”

Alex looks at the monitor and notices that yes, he definitely is. “He could just use that empty bottle.”

“He could, but he will not…see? There he goes,” Quinn yawns, putting his boots up on the console and leaning back to stretch. “And off _you_ go.”

She slips from her own seat and keys in the frequency that will connect her to Anna Kelso’s infolink. “He’s away from his desk. Get in there and download the files; you have about three minutes until shift change.” The other operative acknowledges her quickly and signs off with a soft burst of static, then Alex is left with silence inside her skull once more. “It’s nice that we have another pilot, but there doesn’t seem to be that much for me to do anymore,” she sighs regretfully. 

Quinn yawns again. “There is plenty for you. I am not sorry that you haven’t terrorized me aboard your VTOL lately, however, you fucking menace.” Alex flips him off, and he grins back.

“I guess you’d much rather have Faridah terrorizing you,” she says, watching him closely.

He shakes his head. “Don’t be ridiculous,” Quinn tells her and it’s almost enough to be convincing, if Alex hadn’t already figured out that he has a habit of squinting whenever he lies. His eyes narrow ever so slightly, and she laughs.

“Speaking of ridiculous.”

“You’d know it best,” Quinn says, deliberately misunderstanding her.

Alex takes a long look at the big brother she’d never wanted, and laughs again. “Yes, I would. Why are you still here, anyway? I thought Janus had a job for you in Prague.”

“I’m working on my accent. Apparently I still sound too Russian, even when I’m Irish…it’s a mystery,” Quinn shrugs. “I think it is my ‘r’s where I have the trouble. Anyway, my documents have to be updated before I can leave.”

She turns back to the monitor, watching Anna work. “Tarvos is still gunning for you, so you’d better watch your back.”

“Uh huh,” Quinn says dismissively, standing up to stretch. “Tarvos couldn’t find their own asses without someone mapping the way for them. I’m not worried.”

He walks out to the kitchen where she listens with half an ear as he rummages through the refrigerator, muttering in Russian – Alex catches the words ‘thief’ and ‘murder’ so it sounds like Ben Saxon has been eating Quinn’s food again. “Just stick a label on there with your name on it.”

“He took it off and put it back on upside down. And _then_ he-” Quinn’s voice cuts off, and Alex twists in her seat to see that her partner is leaning against the cabinets with a hand pressed against his left eye.

“You okay? I thought you already recalibrated your neural processors.”

Quinn touches the ports above his eyebrow carefully, and lowers his hand. “I did, but if they are still acting up…”

Alex reminds him that the problem with neural augmentations is that they’re nearly impossible to fix without a specialist; a specialist who isn’t him. “Those headaches are happening too often; we need to get you to a LIMB clinic.”

He gives her a look. “Yes, sure – why don’t I walk through the picket lines of the last remaining clinic in the city. The clinic that is guarded by Tarvos. Why don’t I do that, what a _wonderful_ idea. Thank you so _much_ , Alejandra.”

“I thought you weren’t worried,” Alex teases.

“I’m not worried, it’s just a stupid idea,” Quinn says, baiting her in return. “I thought _you_ were overseeing Anna.” 

“She’ll kick your ass once she finds out you think she needs oversight.”

“You mean, _if_.”

“No, I mean _when_ ‘cause I’m gonna tell her…oh, man. Again?” Alex looks at Quinn in concern as he jerks his head sharply and presses his fingers against his data ports. “I’m calling Ben. He might be able to locate an underground clinic that we can use.”

She ignores Quinn’s protests and does exactly that, but her friend only has bad news to deliver – for Quinn to have access to a specialist, they’ll need to visit the actual LIMB clinic. “ _I know one of the doctors there_ ,” Ben tells her. “ _If you can wait until we get back, I’ll come along to fetch and carry if need be._ ”

“Copy that, Saxon.” Alex ends the call wondering what Ben means by ‘fetch and carry’, glancing back at Quinn. Her partner has recovered enough to demolish two entire containers of takeaway and is chewing at her aggressively. “C’mon, man. You took me to LIMB once.”

Quinn gives her a pained look, and chews faster so that he can talk without having his mouth full. “I have to eat everything before he comes back.”

“How can he eat your food if he’s going _with_ us?”

“You could have told me that before I ate all of this,” Quinn complains. “Now I will have indigestion.”

“Boo hoo, you big baby.”

Alex goes back to the monitors to see that Anna has already left, and she mentally calculates how long they’ll have before the others return. She’s already told Janus her misgivings about having so many members of the Collective in one place, even though they’ll split up into teams and go their separate ways by the end of the week. Despite the ever-present worry of the safe house being raided by the Iluminati’s thugs, it’s nice to be among friends.

She hears the low whine of the second VTOL’s engine as the rest of their group returns to the fold, and goes to the hangar bay while Quinn disappears into the office he’s claimed as a bedroom. “How’d it go?” she asks Anna as the other woman emerges from the plane.

“It went well,” Anna confirms. “Whatever you guys put in that guard’s coffee kept him out of commission for at least an hour. His replacement nearly had a heart attack when he checked the logout book.”

Ben Saxon climbs out next, stretching his limbs as Faridah puts the VTOL through its shutdown sequence. “I told her you’d want to take your own.”

“That’s true enough,” Alex says.

“How’s Garv doing?”

“He ate all his leftovers so you wouldn’t,” she laughs. “Other than that…”

Anna winces in sympathy. “That bad, huh?”

“That EMP really messed up his systems, and he can’t regulate them by himself. A lot of people are still recovering from it; I’m just glad we finally caught the bastard who was setting the traps,” Alex says, trying not to get angry all over again. It’s not enough that Augs are being blamed for damn near everything, but now Naturals have started bombing LIMB clinics and hiding EMP mines on pedestrian bridges. Quinn had run afoul of one such trap and Alex can’t tell if he’s more irritated at himself for not noticing it in time, or that Alex knows that he’d been so disoriented that he’d fallen off the bridge.

They talk for a few minutes more until Anna heads in for a shower, and Alex heads over to greet Faridah. “Ben tells me you’re headed to LIMB? Be careful; I did a fly-over and it looks like Humanity Front’s local chapter decided to show up again. There’s a helipad you might be able to use on the south-facing building…you know, that new one with the spires?”

“Yeah, thanks. I’ll check it out.”

“How’s Quinn?” Faridah asks casually as they walk back inside.

“You can ask him yourself,” Alex says as Quinn ducks back out into the main hall right in front of them. She’s pleased to see the near-identical looks of alarm on both of their faces upon being unexpectedly confronted with each other’s presence. “Speaking of _ridiculous_ , Garvin.”

Faridah looks at her, puzzled. “What’s ridiculous?”

“Nothing,” Quinn says quickly. “How was your flight, Ms. Malik? Turbulence-free, I hope…unlike Alejandra’s wildly acrobatic excursions.”

It is right then and there that Alex decides upon her revenge. “Get your ass to the helipad, Old Timer – make sure you don’t fall off of anything on the way there.”

“See you later, Bullseye,” Faridah says with a smile and a lingering look that he doesn’t see because he’s ducked his head and is scratching the back of his neck.

“Don’t wander into any mines,” Alex mutters, causing her partner to laugh as he saunters off towards the helipad. “ _Turbulence_.”

She stops long enough to log her flight plan and gather up Ben, then it’s time to go. The helipad connected to the Collective’s safe house recedes as the VTOL lifts into the air, and Alex concentrates on flying to the set coordinates. Ben harasses Quinn about eating too soon before a major operation, and the two men exchange good-natured barbs until they’re landing on the rooftop Faridah had recommended. “We’ll go in the back and try to make sure Tarvos doesn’t spot either of us,” Ben says, his eye shields flicking into position. “Keep the meter running, love.”

“Uh huh,” Alex says, turning in her seat to look at them. “Keep your infolink’s channel open in case you have to get out of there fast.”

“Sure thing,” Ben says cheerfully. “Good thing I’ve gotten that heavy lifting mod, since I’ll need to haul this one’s big arse out after surgery.”

Quinn, for a wonder, has no comeback ready…because he’s just gotten another flare-up. “You might need to haul him into it, too. Stay safe, guys. I’ll monitor you from here.”

She tunes into Ben’s infolink frequency, smiling at the way the two men are still pretending not to get along. Ben sends her information on the clinic’s security detail, and then all she has to do is wait for Quinn’s procedure to be completed once they meet with the contact. “ _They won’t let me stay in the room with him, so I’m in the hall just outside,”_ Ben says in the slight muffled tone that means he’s subvocalizing.

“Just keep an eye on him, if you can – the last thing we need is for Tarvos to figure out that he’s right under their noses.”

“ _You got it. I’ll be bringing Quinn back as soon as they wake him up again. Any movement your way?_ ”

Alex glances at the radar. “Not yet.” Hopefully, it won’t happen at all…but it always pays to be realistic.

Realism starts its karmic payout two hours later, after Ben has reported that Quinn’s surgery has been completed and that their mutual annoyance is in the recovery area. “ _Alex, something’s up – I’ve just had a nurse come by to give our boy a shot of Nu-Poz._ ”

“Okay, so…?”

“ _So, LIMB already mixes it into the saline drip they use for procedures. The nurse is out cold and it was a tight fit, but I stuck him in one of the supply cabinets._ ”

Alex stretches her hands out to the interactive screens, accessing the cameras inside the clinic. She scrolls through the different feeds until she catches movement on one of them. “Shit. Clinic’s being raided – you need to get him out of there _now_.”

“ _When I said I’d fetch and carry, I didn’t really_ mean _it_ ,” Ben complains. “ _Send a map of the closest exit to my infolink_.”

“I’ll try to mark their progress for you if I can.”

The next few minutes are among the most harrowing of Alex’s life as she struggles to stay one step ahead of the Tarvos raid. It might have been easier if Ben wasn’t filling her ears with constant complaints about Quinn’s disproportionate weight. “ _We’re out, and he’s awake enough to actually be some help…though that’s not saying much. What the hell does he have_ installed? _Oh, wait a minute; c’mon, mate – not that way!_ ”

She stays with them every step (and lurch) of the way, helping guide them around the increased police presence stationed around the LIMB clinic, and only breaks contact when they reach the top floor of the building she’s waiting atop.

The real fun begins when Ben brings Quinn inside the VTOL. “That was some fun, getting him up the ladder,” Ben says, wiping his forehead in mock-relief.

At least you made it out before the raid,” Alex sighs, pulling back on the yoke and lifting the VTOL into the air. “Quinn! You okay back there, man?”

Her partner is muttering beneath his breath, but speaks up when he’s asked to repeat himself. “What’s that, then?” Ben laughs.

The muttering grows louder. “You…m’ food. _Again_.”

“I’ll buy you more, mate, I swear.”

Alex shakes her head. “You know, I thought it might be fun to have you pull him out of the recovery room early but I never thought you’d actually _need_ to do it. Thanks for helping out, Ben.”

“Any time, Alex,” Ben responds. “It’s the least I could do. Why would you want to bring him out early?”

She laughs. “Haven’t you ever seen people waking up after an upgrade? I thought it would give me a chance to harass him – Quinn’s not the easiest to be around sometimes. Figured this would give me some really good blackmail material, you know?”

Ben laughs, too. “Do I ever. Okay, so let’s have some fun with him…hey, Garv! What’s your real name?”

“Nuh-uh,” Quinn says groggily. “Not gonna tell you. Issa _secret_.”

“We’re all friends here; you could tell us,” Ben wheedles. “C’mon, mate. It’d stay just between us.”

Quinn’s accent see-saws from drunken Russian to drunken Irish and back again. “Nooo, dun think so.”

“Maybe he’d talk if Faridah asked him,” Alex suggests.

“Oh, _Farrrdah_. She’s so…” Quinn sighs dramatically, which they both find hilarious. “ _So_.” They’re treated to a barrage of slurred compliments aimed towards Faridah’s personality, physical appearance, intelligence level, and he’s waxing poetic about her haircut as Alex keys in the landing sequence.

Ben seems to be having the time of his life back there. “You should just ask her out – I’ll bet she likes you,” he says encouragingly.

Quinn makes a rude noise to discount this theory. “Pfffft! Nah.”

“We’re here – let’s get him inside,” Alex calls out. “I can contact Adam if you don’t think you can handle him by yourself.”

“That’s just uncalled for,” Ben says.

They manage to get Quinn inside the safe house without too many problems, because Quinn has decided that he wants to take a nap immediately and refuses to accept that he can’t do so on the helipad. Things go from bad to worse when Faridah makes a reappearance, however. “Dinn’t I say she was pretty? You are _pretty_ ,” Quinn tells her, swaying on his feet.

Faridah’s eyes widen, and her cheeks darken slightly. “Um, thanks.”

“Even your _hair_ is nice, it is like little bird is sitting there and your head is the nest...”

“Okay, _that’s_ a little weird. What’s going on?”

Ben snickers. “Recalibration.”

“I am too big to be bird,” Quinn says. “If I was smaller, I could sit there.”

They all pause for a moment to take in _that_ conversational gem. “Why don’t we get you to bed?” Faridah says, the color of her skin growing more red by the second. “I mean, to sleep. By yourself. Alone.”

None of them knows quite where to look for fear of furthering Faridah’s embarrassment, fanning the flames of Quinn’s neuropozene high, or laughing hysterically. “Ben? Why don’t _you_ get Garvin to his room where he can sleep this off?” Anna interjects, having drifted over to see what all the fuss was about.

Ben steers Quinn, who is rather vocal about preferring to stay and admire Faridah, towards his room and Alex gives a relieved sigh when the two men disappear through the far door. “Wow.”

“You can say _that_ again,” Anna declares. “It’s too bad you had to pull him out of there before he was ready to go.”

Alex hears the subtle rebuke and acknowledges it with a nod. “I guess it is.”

“Still, an audiovisual record of this could go a long way the next time he tries to pull a fast one on you,” Anna says before drifting off to search through the refrigerator.

Alex is left with only Faridah for company, and she looks at the other pilot thoughtfully as she tries to decide how to handle this. “Thanks for the tip about the landing pad.”

“No problem.”

“Look, I _really_ didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

Faridah’s carefully blank expression finally resolves itself into a smile. “It’s okay, Alex. I’ve been around a lot of people fresh from surgery – they tend to say some crazy things. I don’t think I’ve ever been told my hair looks like a bird’s nest before, but I guess there’s a first time for everything.”

Alex laughs. “Yeah, that was a little wild. He’ll sleep it off and be back to his old, annoying self in no time.”

“I don’t know whether that’s a good thing or not,” Faridah says, laughing along with Alex. “Look, I’ll see you later – Adam called in for a pickup out by the old refinery.”

They walk back out to the helipad together, talking about nothing in particular. “We’re thinking of going out later, all of us. You up for it?”

“Hell, yeah. I could use a decent night out.”

“I hear _that_. See you when you get back,” Alex says.

She turns to go, and Faridah stops her with one final question. “Hey, Alex?”

“What’s up?”

“Is Quinn’s old, annoying self…seeing anybody?”

Alex just barely stops herself from laughing at the thought of Quinn being involved with anyone. “I think it’s safe to say that he’s all yours, Flygirl.”

“Oh. Thanks,” Faridah says awkwardly. “Listen, don’t…don’t _tell_ him…?”

“Not a peep,” Alex promises. “See ya.”

She forces herself to walk normally until the door closes behind her, then Alex runs straight to the kitchen area where Ben and Anna are divvying up Quinn’s clearly-marked leftovers. “You two are _not_ going to believe this.”

Anna blinks at her, sighs deeply, and reaches into her pocket to withdraw a folded bill. Ben plucks the money from his partner’s fingers with a flourish. “Told you so.”


End file.
